This paper examines the use of switching costs by long-lived strategic buyers to manage dynamic competition between rival suppliers. The analysis reveals how buyers may employ switching costs to their advantage. We show when switching costs are high a buyer may induce suppliers to price more competitively by credibly threatening to replace the incumbent supplier with his rivals. The implication...

Conditional expected values in Markov chains are solutions to a set of associated backward differential equations, which may be ordinary or partial depending on the number of relevant state variables. This paper investigates the validity of these differential equations by locating the points of non-smoothness of the state-wise conditional expected values, and it presents a numerical method for ...

We present an empirical model of firm behavior in the presence of switching costs. Customers’ transition probabilities, embedded in firms’ value maximization, are used in a multiperiod model to derive estimable equations of a first-order condition, market share (demand), and supply equations. The novelty of the model is in its ability to extract information on both the magnitude and significanc...

label switching technology is a flexible and high performance method for forwarding layer three packets that are mapped to layer two flows. each label switch router, lsr, needs a specific label for every flow, where the number of labels depends on the mapping and granularity of flows. data and control driven methods are the most significant and popular methods in label mapping policy. the above...

In this paper, we present a method that combines the merits of Bayesian nonparametrics, specifically stick-breaking priors, and largemargin kernel machines in the context of sequential data classification. The proposed model employs a set of (theoretically) infinite interdependent large-margin classifiers as model components, that robustly capture local nonlinearity of complex data. The employe...

The corporate credit risk literature has many studies modelling the change in the credit risk of corporate bonds over time. There is far less analysis of the credit risk for portfolios of consumer loans. However behavioural scores, which are commonly calculated on a monthly basis by most consumer lenders are the analogues of ratings in corporate credit risk. Motivated by studies in corporate cr...

this paper examines regime shifts in tedpix return and volatility and the effects of positive and negative crude oil shocks and gold price fluctuations on stock market shifts behavior using markov switching egarch model with student’s t-distribution. we detect two episodes of series behavior, one relative to low mean/high variance regime namely bear state and the other to high mean/low variance...

This paper assesses the long-run bilateral trade relations between the US and Mexico. North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) had no additional impacts on import functions. Gradual switching existed even before the agreement became effective. © 2002 Society for Policy Modeling. Published by Elsevier Science Inc. All rights reserved. JEL classification: F13; C22

In this paper we study, using the sup LR test, the possibility of discrimination between two classes of models: the Markov switching models of Hamilton (1989) and the Threshold Auto-Regressive Models (TAR) of Lim and Tong (1980). This work is motivated by the fact that generally practicians use, in applications, switching models without any statistical justi cation. Using experiment simulations...

We consider Markov-switching regression models, i.e. models for time series regression analyses where the functional relationship between covariates and response is subject to regime switching controlled by an unobservable Markov chain. Building on the powerful hidden Markov model machinery and the methods for penalized B-splines routinely used in regression analyses, we develop a framework for...